


Filthy Weather

by Darklady



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Domestic, M/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 16:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darklady/pseuds/Darklady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bertram Wooster and Reginald Jeeves cope with the Blitz.<br/>Better than one might expect.<br/>Which is in no way the same as *well*, mind you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filthy Weather

**Author's Note:**

> Just a small bit started by a drabble prompt. (Thanks lawnnun!) Clearly, it overgrew the boundaries.

“Filthy weather.” She squinted at the wall of snow that rendered blackout curtain redundant. Nature had provided a thicker drapery that the thin moon did nothing to enliven. “Even the bombers are frozen out.”

“Small blessings.” Bertram Wooster twitched the cloth out of her chilled fingers. “Go to bed, Angela. You’ll be warm there.” 

Or as warm as one could be, these January days. Even with Angela and her family moved in [their own house being sans-front-wall - a sort of remodel via Kraut rocket] the now-double coal ration was still on the scant side, need being judged against a normal winter and not the bone-chiller blowing though tonight.

He pulled his dressing gown tighter, wincing a bit at the ‘pop’ of thread. The back armhole, letting go again, and Bertie knew he was pants with a needle. 

“Me?” Angela pulled away. “Question is why you’re still up. I’ve got a husband out there – her nod took in the blacked-out London streets - but you…”

“Jeeves is due in.” The words came rushing out ahead of Bertie’s brain’s lethargic plod. If he hadn’t been the idiot his Aunt Agatha had inevitably declared – back in the days when she had been around to make that announcement? Well, a decade of domestic content had done what a childhood of matronly terror could not achieve.

His cousin, however, just rolled her eyes. “Really, Bertie. You’d think he was your employer, the way you hang on the man. “

Wasn’t that an image to think on? Bertie rather liked the idea, given that if he was working for Jeeves? Well, there was no force in heaven or below that would move him from his post. On the other hand? Here self-knowledge showed her less pleasing profile. There was always the worry that a clever chap like Jeeves would have long since fired Bertie’s absent-minded arse.

Bertie shook his head, clearing the fog of late hours and useless fantasy.

Angela had gone on to mess with the sideboard, shaking the last drops of weak tea from the cooling teapot. Her frown, directed at the sugar tongs, showed they were – once again – out of the sweet stuff. She shrugged and swallowed the brew plain.

“If he’s on the night train you should have told him stay at the station until a decent time of morning.”

“He said his sister gave him eggs.” Bertie kept watch from the corner of his eye.

His cousin was still grousing. Best up the ante.

“Also butter and jam.”

“Oh!” Her smile said – sans words – that *that* made things quite *quite* different. She glanced from Bertie, to the kitchen, to the thin pulp mystery Bertie had been reading. “Do you think you might take that down to the lobby? Just in case, you know, we might miss the bell?” Bustling around, she snatched up Bertie’s sweater and a lap robe from the sofa. “It would be dreadful to leave the dear man waiting outside in this weather.”

~!@!~

One gooseneck lamp perched on the counter, sharing space with the black bulk of the telephone and the maroon flash of the buildings day calendar. Bertie could have clicked it on, could have returned to reading his half-finished novel, but that would have required closing the blackout curtains. He preferred – for reasons he chose not to enunciate – to sit in the darkness and so permit the view of the midnight street.

It was empty, but then at this hour the streets would always have been empty – or nearly so. Petrol rationing and light restrictions might have deducted the early deliveries, but the crush of wartime workers added unnumbered pedestrians. Even on the wrong side of midnight, if he chose to lean close and squint at the corner, where this street meet with the wider crossroad, he might make out the black-on-shadow outline of a Fire Warden giving the warning to some nightshift worker picking his careful way between the berms of windblown snow.

A low rumble had Bertie jumping back, ducking away from the glass, but no. It was only a truck, camouflage paint disguising the outline of the cab but not the curved points of the ordinance on the stake bed. Heavy shells. Ammunition for the anti-aircraft embankments further out from the city. The lorry’s passage cut a tunnel though the storm, flashing a view of the buildings across the street. Wood planks covered the plate glass of the lower windows, a prayer of preservation against shrapnel if useless contra an actual bomb. Paper in turn covered the planks. Some commercial, some official announcements (directives to douse lights, to report derelictions, to save water and grease and tin) and some just the random chatter of a restless city. Apartment such-and-such had a room to rent. Mrs. So-and-so could hem uniform pants and supply mending. Mr. Whomever had for sale some extra furniture, or children’s toys, or books, or whatever might be exchanged for whatever he did not have.

Before the war those transactions would have been… well, mostly they *wouldn’t* have been. Except the books or shoes or such, which might have been sold by shops down the alley or sidewalk traders like the old woman who used to perch on the corner offering flowers by the basketful. The street vendors were gone now, the women to war work and the men to… Bertie had no idea. War, he supposed.

A bus trundled past, inching slowly as the driver labored to navigate with darkened headlights. Even in this weather the top deck had riders. Workers heading out or coming in, soldiers going on duty or Home Guard returning from watch.

Reaching the corner, the bus clanked to a halt. One heavily burdened figure stepped off.

~!@!~

“Jeeves!” Bertie struggled to push the door against the bitter wind. 

Jeeves helped – or tried to. He was hampered by the layers of cloth wrapped shawl-like over his greatcoat, extra (if insufficient) protection contra the midnight chill. The unshoveled snow, now turned to filthy ice underfoot, meant that what pull he could provide , burdened as Jeeves was with a double armful of basketry, tended more to set him moving than to affect the door. Working in blackout darkness wasn’t any joy either.

Still, after some extended panting and gasping Bertie managed to get Jeeves – encumbrances included – securely inside the domestic portal and the outer door secured against the world.

“Home!” Jeeves whispered the word as a benediction. His body was shaking, his face white under his black bowler.

“Home.” And Bertram’s answer, murmured into the other man’s dark curls, named his being and not their mutual location. 

Their hands locked, fingers twined and palm pressed to palm, burning and singular, the only heat as their breaths rose, twin ghosts of white fog in the barren lobby.

Bertram pulled his man into the alcove.

The doorman used to keep packages there. Morning mail delivery, mostly, when the parcel post came in before the late-rising residents came down. Sometimes bright hatboxes or shirt boxes from the better stores. It was empty now. No early post. No fashion at any time, what with the fierce rationing. No doorman, for that matter. Watching a portal was the opposite of a reserved occupation.

“The gifts…” Dark eyes flicked to the stack, but rested no more than a second before emotion drew them back to Bertie’s burning blue gaze.

“Can wait.”

The words were iron command.

“Yes.” Jeeves shed the top wraps, the damp wool to puddling ignored around their feet. His knit gloves followed, stiff with pressed snow and only a degree more cold than the icy hands that struggled to move the weather-sodden Chesterfield.

Bertie lent a pair of nimble hands, warmer fingers making quick work of the rows of buttons. Snow-drenched overcoat first, as reason would dictate, but after that clear duty the fingers persisted, seeking out deeper fastening. Jacket, then vest, and finally the delicate passage between shirt studs, until only a thin undershirt stood between desire and a delicate nipple.

Jeeves shivered.

Bertram shivered also, from passion and from chill as his man’s clever fingers returned the gift of unbuttoning, finding the long-familiar pathway from fly to undershorts to brush that most tender spot between shaft and scrotum, the one where the long vein teased the nerves. Bertie had always been sensitive there, and his lover had always been the most observant and clever of chaps. It had taken… not long at all… for Reginald Jeeves to learn the trick of transforming Wooster into wobble with a single precise stroke.

It was a skill that only improved with practice. Much practice.

He might not be as clever, but as a Magdalene grad Bertie could swot when a topic demanded. Anatomy – the anatomy of one R. J. in particular – was a topic worthy of a king’s scholar, and Bertram had applied himself to the laboratory of the bedroom with a master’s devotion. 

Their lips locked, muffling the passionate pledges that could not be withheld.

Bertie wrapped his fingers over the round thickness, pulling stroke after stroke in the pace taught in those college days. His man’s rapid breaths served as the boatswain’s chant, encouraging Bertie’s grip on the oar of love.

In answer, the broad fingers moved back. Ghosting between rear cheeks to circle and plunge. Lightning sparked from that beloved finger, racing up Bertie’s spine, setting off joy after joy in a twist of sensation and memory.

Bertie shattered.

His body dropped limp against his man’s broad chest. His palm twisted one last time, gripping their treasure of shaft and balls together in loving heat.

Jeeves groaned, surrendering all even as he claimed all, arm wrapped around the arms wrapped around him.

Bertie breathed deeply of his one true oxygen. Of that mix of wool and hair oil and Reginald – Reginald Jeeves – his Jeeves.

The niche was cold, slick stone and worn wood, and even in these dead hours no true privacy. They would have to move soon. Life would demand that they pull their outer trapping back to propriety. Wash in the chill dribble of the janitor’s sink. Comb their hair and straighten their masks. Double-lock the entry door and double-lock their hearts.

Tomorrow would be one more day of holding on to the need to just hold on, of hoping to perhaps find a reason to hope. Of doing one’s duties. Of doing without. Of doing what must be done in denial of what one would and perhaps even what one should. Another day at war within a world at war. 

In this tsunami of history carrying them all a minute of mortal flesh, of kisses and tears, was nothing. But for the moment – for this single moment – it was almost enough.

~!@!~

“Too long,” Jeeves gasped into Bertram’s collar.

“Too long,” Bertram agreed ferverently.

Not just the week past, spent less on ‘holiday’ then on domestic overtime as Reginald had helped his sister rearrange the Jeeves ancestral cottage to accommodate Mabel Biffen and the brood of Biffen children – her husband being off to serve. [Bertie wasn’t quite sure what the Navy could make of Biffy – but so long as it wasn’t a navigator? Bertie trusted the Lords Admiral knew what they were about.] No, the last two months had been a sort of localized separation, since Cousin Angela had been driven to house-guesting via German high explosives. Bertie loved his relation – he truly did – but even excluding the illicit pash re yearning yet masculine hearts? Well, the raw scrape of characters and habits re: Bertram and Travers kindred was a sort of chemistry on it’s own. Nitroglycerine, perhaps.

“We could…” 

Bertie had no idea what the rest of those words should be. In better times the sentence would have finished with Jeeves packing while Bertie called for tickets. Rail tickets for a Scottish holiday – days split between salmon fishing and golf (their respective hobbies) and nights split not at all. Ferry tickets for a jaunt over the Channel, café society divided between jazz in cellar clubs and concerts in soaring boxes, and again no division between man and man. Cruise tickets for New York, back when the circle of the bright and beautiful glowed like a halo of pleasure from Manhattan society affairs to the bohemian artistry of the Village.

“If only…” Jeeves answered. All the response required.

New York was a universe away, and even if he could manipulate the needed tickets from some friend of a friend of a Bureaucrat, the bright young men of his youth were now over here. Or rather ‘over there’. Corky had joined the Marines, and at last (highly censored) letter was somewhere far too close to Japan. Rocky had come though a few months back on the way to France with the Army Air Corp. Even Cyril had left the city, going out to California to make movies for the troops. He had sent one record with Rocky – a clever little ditty about darning ones socks. (Bertie had tried. He had slept on the sofa that night.

Paris was tragedy, the memory more pain than pleasure, since every newsreel image was another pleasure lost.

The Highlands? Might be possible. Although in this time of ‘is that trip necessary’ tickets would cost high – favors as well as cash – and finding a croft that wasn’t full of orphans would take some doing. Still?

Something – some escape - was feeling supremely necessary.

Some words must have made it past his exhaustion, because Jeeves was moving back.

Bertie lurched forward, but found himself held in place.

Brown eyes search his own, his man’s face not so much severe as… solid.

“The current… situation… is…”

“Worse on you, old chum. I can hold up if you can.” Or rather he could hold up as long as Jeeves *did*. He had no delusion that he would last a moment longer. Losing his Jeeves – to the war, to the lure of brighter prospects (for which he rebuked his unthankful heart), to the calculation that the risk of discovery was higher than Jeeves found him worth… to any and all of these. That – more than bombs or invasion or death – were his real wartime fears.

Jeeves nodded, slowly.

“Still, it might be… better for all concerned… were it possible to separate the two households.”

“No argument there.” No hope, either. Every night brought the bombs, and every morning the count of how many less flats and houses remained in London. Less people, too, but thank heaven usually there were survivors among those. Survivors, however, who needed house space in whatever corner they could find of whatever intact combination of roof and walls remained.

“I noted a small but rather pleasant residence near my sister’s cottage. Two stories. Local stone. Undesirably far from the train, in these days of petrol rations, and in need of some maintenance, but solid architecture. “ Jeeves' eyebrow twitched, the sign of cleverly uncovered gossip. “The current owner is elderly, and has suggested she would prefer to join her sister in Ireland if she could find a buyer.”

Hard to do these days. Not that there weren’t plenty of folks interested in country homes, but few of them had ready cash, and banks weren’t always eager to put a loan when their collateral could become rubble at the whim of one stray bomb.

Bertie, thanks entirely to one man’s wise management (said man being R. Jeeves, be it understood) had a full pouch of the oof. Much of it invested overseas, where said Jeeves had moved resources to separate the Wooster fortune from the fortunes of war, but quite enough left to satisfy one Irish biddy re retirement income – that clearly being his man's (implied) directive.

“I’m not sure Angela will agree to move out of the Metrop.” 

It was the only objection. Jeeves could buy any house he pleased, or as many as he pleased, so long as the common purse could bear the load. That fact was a given, like gravity or the pitiful performance of the Cambridge blues, and like those facts accepted without discussion. Indeed, it was probable (and again – irrelevant to any discussion) that Jeeves had already negotiated the sale, called the solicitors to draw up the deed, and put payment in escrow.

“My dear Wooster.” Jeeves leaned forward, resting his forehead on the tangle of blond curls. “If she won’t? I will.”

“Reg.” The name passed into air, proof of Bertie’s shock. “You love London.”

Bertie could feel, rather than see, the nod of agreement slide forehead to forehead. Jeeves' words, however, carried the other message. “London is not the only thing I love.”

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©KKR 2013


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